Curated Quotations

Joan Didion

Quotations

  • “I’m not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.” -Joan Didion

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  • “To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.” -Joan Didion

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  • “Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.” -Joan Didion

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  • “Before I’d written movies, I never could do big set-piece scenes with a lot of different speakers – when you’ve got twelve people around a dinner table talking at cross purposes. I had always been impressed by other people’s ability to do that.” -Joan Didion

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  • “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” -Joan Didion

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  • “Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?” -Joan Didion

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  • “Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.” -Joan Didion

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